RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 3 episode 1 review/Ruview: Mama Ru has more tricks up her Klein Epstein & Parker sleeve

After a period of gagging to be gagged again and a Handmaid’s Tale spoof promo video, which should be filed under things drag queens shouldn’t really be allowed to parody, RuPaul and her All Stars (including Thorgy Thor’s culturally insensitive dreadlocks) are back for another season of lipstick reveals and Lip-Sync-for-your-Legacy gaggery.

The big question on every queen's overdrawn lips — aside from wondering why on earth Aja is among the set of the show’s returnees — was answered in this season’s tense premiere. Now, you wouldn’t really be a RuPaul fan if you didn’t expect Mama Ru to have another queen up her Klein Epstein & Parker sleeve. But who would it be? “Shangela’s already here,” as Trixie rapidly reads when Ru fanfares the arrival of surprise queen number ten. The internet’s money was on Valentina — the stunning “fan favourite” from season 10 who left too soon under the dark shadow of trying to get through a lip-sync wearing a bejewelled mask. But, if Ru has taught us anything over the twelve previous seasons of Drag Race, it’s that she loves a surprise: a surprise which came in the glorious form of Bebe Zahara Benet, winner of Season 1 way back in 2009 when the show was a far less fierce ball-game, with far less fierce stakes ($80,000 less, that is).

The Queens were, naturally, gagged as Bebe sashayed back into the workroom with her demure countenance, replete with an air of intimidation. And intimidating it was — not just the return of Bebe — but the entire format of All Stars. Here are ten decorated queens each, as Ru embarrassingly points out, “with something to prove.” There’s a foundation of both desperation and anxiety at the heart of this ‘Greatest Hits’ version of the three-time Emmy Award-winning Drag Race, which sees the Queens grasping to resurrect their public image, to seem improved as artists both personally and aesthetically, and to set right public misconceptions fans may have developed after each Queen leaves their original season. The Queens know it, and can clearly feel the corset tightening, but this high-octane anguish is the part of All Stars which is perhaps the most painful, but also highly entertaining.

And speaking of entertainment, the maxi-challenge this week was The All Stars Variety Show, in which each of the ten Queens were asked to deliver a special performance based around their special talents. Four Queens performed an original “song” (more iconic semi-rap-poems about having an ass like JLo’s over some dulled tropical house beats), while others chose to dance, play violin (no prize for guessing who), mix burlesque with clowning, or kind of walk on the spot and say the word “fashion” (we get it Milk, you were in a Marc Jacobs campaign).

The hands-down highlights were Kennedy Davenport who did a cartwheel onto a box which made everyone literally die. Ben De La Creme revealed fifty sets of nipple tassels in a sumptuously judged burlesque-cum-clown-skit, and Aja (once she’d ditched her uncomfortable Samurai getup) proved her rightful place among this cast of Drag Race Royalty, and death dropped from the highest of heights: a move that earned her a place on the week’s top-spot and will have us all sending GIFs of the move for months to come under the title “me jumping to conclusions”.

The Lip Sync for your Legacy was Nikki Minaj’s Anaconda, which saw Aja and Ben De La Creme battle it out to win $10,000, while also sending a queen home. Ben, in her genius take on drunk-white-girl-dancing-to-rap-in-the-club-realness snatched the cash tip, and sent Morgan McMichaels to an early grave. If All Stars fans will be screaming anything at their laptops week on week, it’s that each queen needs to fight for her place to stay. When they sit down and say “it is what it is, send me home” — henny, it’s time to pack them heels. But never fear, because in true All Stars Season 2 style, Morgan will certainly be back.

And for all the throat-cutting, mug-beating, sisterly-loving tension, Drag Race remains perhaps one of the most powerful, important shows on TV — giving platform to complex characters who aren’t just reductive portrayals of us gays we see so often in the media. As the defeated McMichaels says, “you realise that drag queens encompass everything.”

So gentlemen, start your engines because this season is going to be just that: Everything!

RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars season 3 airs in the UK on Comedy Central on Saturday nights at 10pm.